Warrior Stories

A NOTE FROM DAVID

FEATURED STORY

“I had come to believe my children were better off without me.”

Lucia Strauss still remembers believing that lie. Not because it was true, but because addiction had convinced her it was.

By late 2021, the mother of three had spent years watching drugs, alcohol, broken relationships, and loss take pieces of her life one by one. The woman her children needed her to be felt impossibly far away. What remained was shame, isolation, and the growing belief that the people she loved most would be better off without her.

Looking back now, Lucia knows the lie for what it was. At the time, she believed every word of it.

Lucia’s story began long before addiction took hold. Her father left when she was five years old. Her mother, though hardworking and supportive in many ways, struggled with alcoholism for most of Lucia’s life. At home, Lucia witnessed firsthand the damage addiction could cause. Outside the home, she began searching for acceptance and escape wherever she could find it.

She began using drugs at fifteen. What started as experimentation slowly became dependence.

“I started wanting to know how different drugs would make me feel,” Lucia says. “Eventually I started doing things I swore I would never do.”

The years that followed brought one heartbreak after another. Her marriage became consumed by drugs, alcohol, abuse, and instability. Her relationship with her children suffered. In 2020, her mother passed away. Not long afterward, she lost her best friend to suicide.

The grief was overwhelming.

“I was angry,” she says. “Drugs and alcohol became my escape.”

But the escape never healed anything. It only carried her further from the people she loved and deeper into the pain she was trying to avoid.

Eventually Lucia found herself living in run-down hotels and on the streets of Memphis. Each day became less about living and more about surviving. The farther she fell, the more convinced she became that she had ruined every important relationship in her life. Most painful of all was what she believed about her children. She loved them deeply, but addiction had convinced her that love was no longer enough. She had come to believe they were better off without her.

Eventually, Lucia knew she needed more than another short-term program. She had tried that before. A few weeks away from drugs and alcohol was not enough to rebuild a life that had been broken for decades.

While attending Drug Court, Lucia met a Warriors Center graduate named Chris. He shared his story and encouraged her to make a phone call. Then he gave her the number for Holly Ince.

On December 6, 2021, Lucia entered the Warriors Center. The early days were anything but easy.

Lucia had learned to survive by staying guarded. On the streets, vulnerability could be dangerous. In addiction, trust often led to disappointment. At Warriors Center, she was being asked to do something she had spent years avoiding. She was being asked to tell the truth.

“Talking about my pain was the hardest thing,” she remembers. “I couldn’t do it without crying.”

There were days she wanted to leave. Living with other women, confronting old wounds, and learning a completely different way of life was uncomfortable. Recovery required honesty, accountability, and trust. None of those things came naturally anymore.

But Lucia also knew what waited for her outside.

“I knew I would die if I went back to the streets,” she says.

So she stayed. And because she stayed, something began to change.

“Lucia was willing but hesitant,” recalls Holly Ince. “She had spent a long time with people who were untrusting and had been running from a lot of things in their life. To watch her accept God and learn to love people the way she always wanted to be loved and accepted has been a beautiful thing.”

For the first time in years, Lucia found structure. She found accountability. She found women who understood the shame she carried. She found leaders who challenged her while refusing to give up on her. Most importantly, she began discovering a relationship with Christ that changed the way she saw herself.

For years, she had simply been surviving. Now she was learning how to live.

“When you’re in addiction, you’re not living,” she says. “You’re just existing.”

As Lucia continued to grow, others began noticing qualities she could not yet see in herself. As graduation approached, she was working in the Warriors Center thrift store when she received an unexpected phone call from Founder and CEO David Vincent.

He wanted to know if she would consider joining the staff after graduation and helping lead the Bootcamp program. The call stunned her.

“It made me feel seen and trusted,” Lucia says. “I didn’t expect it. I was terrified, but I jumped at the chance.”

David says the decision was rooted in what he had already seen.

“She was very sincere and always had a servant’s heart for the other ladies who had been through many of the same struggles she had endured.”

For much of her life, Lucia had felt overlooked, unwanted, and unworthy. Now someone was trusting her to help guide other women through the same darkness she had once known.

“I realized there was something more to life than just existing,” she says. “Living for God and serving others was like nothing I had ever felt before.”

Lucia graduated from Warriors Center on December 12, 2022. She remained on staff, helping other women walk the same difficult road she had traveled herself. In the spring of 2025, she became Assistant Director of the Olive Branch Women’s Center.

But her title is not the heart of her story. The heart of her story is restoration.

Today, Lucia helps women who arrive carrying many of the same fears and wounds she once carried herself. When they walk through the doors feeling ashamed, defeated, or hopeless, Lucia understands. She understands the fear, the loneliness, and the temptation to run. She understands what it feels like to believe that the people you love would be better off without you, because she once believed it too.

“The other ladies all see that and know that they, too, can face the skeletons in their closets,” Holly says. “Lucia is definitely an example of learning how to be still in the Lord.”

Eric Barnett, Senior Vice President and Chief of Staff, remembers Lucia from her early days in the program.

“She was teachable in those early days and was eager to learn and do new things,” Eric says. “When I returned and found Lucia in a leadership role, her personal skills and desire to help other people had definitely risen to the surface. That has allowed her to excel in every position that she has held.”

Still, when Lucia is asked what makes her proudest, she does not talk first about leadership. She talks about her children.

“I am most proud of the restoration with my children,” she says. “Being a present mother who is there for them.”

That answer tells you everything you need to know. A few years ago, Lucia believed her children would be better off without her. Today, those relationships have been restored. Later this month, one of her sons will travel beside her on a mission trip to Honduras. The relationship she once feared was lost forever has become one of the clearest reminders of God’s faithfulness in her life.

Lucia with her three children.

The mother who once felt absent is present. The woman who once felt discarded is serving others. The life that seemed broken beyond repair has been rebuilt. And the lie that once defined her has finally been answered.

Her children were not better off without her. And God was not finished with her.

Every day, men and women arrive at Warriors Center carrying the same kind of shame Lucia once carried. They believe they have gone too far, lost too much, failed too often, or hurt too many people to begin again. Lucia’s story is one life, but it is also a picture of the larger work happening every day at Warriors Center. Families are being restored. Mothers are becoming present again. Men and women are discovering purpose. Hope is being passed from one life to another.

For Lucia, the lie that once defined her life has been replaced by something stronger.

“God still chose me,” she says, “even when I didn’t choose myself.”

By the Numbers

Behind every story is the daily work of recovery, accountability, and rebuilding lives across all Warriors Center locations.